And i'm just curious, for the Downtown Chelsea stop, why don't they put it in between the Washington Ave. Bridge and the Broadway Bridge, with access from both bridges, sort of like how they've done it on the Gilman Sq. stop on GLX, where both School street and Medford bridges have access to the station. Is this more about station cost, or are there technical reasons for not doing this? Granted this station won't be quite the same as Gilman Sq., but if this is ever converted to LRV seems like its a similar situation as Gilman.

Space is a little tight there for fitting tracks + busway + station platform + ramps to street + those giant power line poles: http://goo.gl/maps/JFcfK. It probably wouldn't be a problem with LRT or if there were an obvious place to move the power lines that didn't put a gigantic-ass pole in somebody's backyard, but it's tight. And the commuter rail station relocation definitely wouldn't be able to go there at a combo stop, so they focused their energy at a site where both could go.

Also...somebody believes awfully hard in the TOD fairy at Mystic Mall's immaculately manicured asphalt expanses. Easy access to the 111, 116, and 117 bus transfers loses out to the 112 and 114 at the Mall. In the real world the 111 (#7 in systemwide daily ridership), 116 (#17), and 117 (#26) outslug the 112 (#91) and 114 (#142) by a cosmically large margin. If the neighborhood had its druthers Washington-Broadway would be the preferred stop location hands-down. But the political interests behind it don't match up with the neighborhood's Yellow Line bread-and-butter, and ultimately the party that controls the money gets their way.

If LRT conversion happens in the future with a real Urban Ring, then Washington-Broadway is a pretty obvious infill stop. There's just a little too much engineering difficulty and short-attention-span political difficulty working against it for this relatively quick build. I'd roll eyes a little at the latter issue of bad habits being hard to break, but the former issue does have a legit impact on project costs...and thus, whether the project is viable to happen at all. In the end, building it at all does more good. There's nothing preventing them from figuring out infill stop scenarios at Washington-Broadway when they've got the service well-established and have the bandwidth to consider future tack-on improvements.

Considering how many bus lines go through the Sumner/Callahan tunnels I'd say it might be best to install non-Sliver Line HOV bus lanes along Rt 1A and the Salem Turnpike (107). You don't need to call it the "Silver Line" to make BRT worth while.

I'm really excited for this, but the Chelsea St bridge is really going to impact headways. It takes a good 45 minutes for a full cycle to complete when it goes up. I'd rather have the service than not of course, but there will be periods in the day where SL Gateway service simply isn't available.

^ Yup. That draw is a big impediment to reliable public transit between Chelsea and Eastie. SOMEDAY they'll have to think of a solution for this problem, especially if rail is ever brought through the corridor.

^ Yup. That draw is a big impediment to reliable public transit between Chelsea and Eastie. SOMEDAY they'll have to think of a solution for this problem, especially if rail is ever brought through the corridor.

Nit-pick: The Chelsea St bridge is a vertical lift bridge, not a draw. The Meridian St bridge is a draw and takes less time to cycle open and closed.

Weird politics. BRT sounds new and fancy. It "sounds smart" too, primarily because most people think that roads are free. They think: "oh look how cheap it is, we can use buses and provide 'rail-like' service without building rails." Your average voter doesn't stop to think about how expensive it is to build roadways because they're accustomed to having them provided for free everywhere.

That's not to say there isn't a place for buses, just that BRT is oversold. Buses are best when you can reuse or rededicate existing roadway infrastructure for transit. Building brand new rights-of-way, however, completely kills any cost savings.

Even people who ought to know better engage in this nonsense. For example, BSA invited an "expert" speaker on BRT to a meeting last year. This guy claimed something like this: "wow! you can build 200 km of BRT for the cost of 1 km of elevated rail!!!" In the question session, I asked him whether those 200 km would be dedicated lanes with the same quality of service as a grade-separated right-of-way, and all I got was a big "uhhhhhh" in response.